Often, hoarders have a real mental block about getting rid of things because we spent money on them. It seems that getting rid of them now is a waste of that original money and that the only way for it to not have been a waste is to keep the item.

The problem is, if we’re not benefiting from the product, it’s not doing us any good to keep it, even if it cost us a lot of cash in the first place.

One way to tackle this is to sell these things, rather than donate or trash them. This video with Donna Smallin Kuper looks at how to declutter for cash and, even though Craigslist isn’t used much here in the UK, there are some great ideas here.

Ok, it’s overly simplistic and doesn’t take into account the emotional attachments that hoarders have to their belongings BUT if you’re stuck for ideas on where to start with your decluttering efforts, this video from BuzzFeed might just be what you need to push you into action.

Inspired by this video by Gayle Goddard, I have been thinking a lot about what she said about including ‘time to reset’ at the end of a task. This involves making sure that the last few minutes of the time you’ve allocated to a task are given to tidying up after it.

So, if you’re going to do some arts and crafts for half an hour, the last five minutes should be given over to cleaning up and putting things back where they belong.

To naturally neat people, this is probably just common sense. But for people like me, who gave up trying to have any order in her home for far too long, it feels a bit like a revelation.

Often, it seems pointless (oh hi, overwhelm again!), and yet, if we don’t, things get worse, not better. Progress is not just halted, it’s reversed.